The Visual Human Development Index: Introduction

On November 4, the HDR office at the United Nations Development Programme published the 20th Edition of the Human Development Report. Among the many background studies that were conducted for this year’s anniversary edition, there was a visual exploration of the Human Development Index (HDI). This work explored different ways of using graphical statistical methods to communicate the information contained in the HDI.

The HDI Tree aggregates data in the Human Development Index graphically instead of numerically. A long standing criticism of the Human Development Index is that, because it averages indicators of Income, Health and Education, it is possible for countries to obtain the same score with different combinations of indicators. This creates the possibility of substituting Education for Health, Health for Income or Income for Education.

The HDI tree deals with the numerical aggregation problem by using a graphical representation in which the total value of a country’s HDI is presented together with that of its components and subcomponents. This way it is possible to see immediately the contribution of each dimension to the value of a country’s HDI.

Moreover, the HDI tree represents an alternative way of branding the idea of Human Development and communicating its message graphically to a wide audience. For more on the HDI tree, see the original report or this summary document.